For Esme - with Love and Squalor Summary

The narrator indicates that he has recently received a wedding invitation from England for a wedding he would very much like to attend. After discussing it with his wife, he has decided against it. His wife has reminded him that her mother will be visiting them at the time the wedding is to take place. Nevertheless, the narrator says, he intends to write down a few things about the bride in honor of the occasion. They may make the groom slightly uncomfortable, he suggests, but this is for the better.

The story slips back in time to when the narrator is an enlisted man in the Army during World War II, stationed in Devon, England and taking a special training course taught by British Intelligence. He is one of a group...